The Blog

1. Hamas resumed rocket fire on Friday, injuring two Israelis. According to Reuters, the weekend rocket fire “has focused on kibbutzim, or collective farms, just across the border in what appeared to be a strategy of sapping Israel’s morale without triggering another ground invasion of the tiny Gaza Strip.” Or as the Los Angeles Times called it, “a war of attrition.” Later on Sunday, Hamas reportedly agreed to another 72-hour ceasefire, but Israel responded that it wouldn’t negotiate under fire and will continue military operations.

2. As the US begins airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq, Chemi Shalev comments that this could change the world’s perceptions of Operation Protective Edge. Big Media’s saturation coverage of Gaza may have dire implications for the Yazidis, a Kurdish tribe in Iraq imperiled by the Islamic State. Thousands of Yazidis are stranded on Mount Sinjar, facing an Islamic State ultimatum: convert or die. Shalev writes:

While experts around the world were dissecting the personal rivalries inside the Israeli cabinet, the internal logic of the Hannibal procedure and the exact origin and/or destination of each and every Hamas rocket or IDF artillery shell, near the site of the great city of Nineveh a potential genocide that could wipe a proud and ancient tribe off the face of the earth was just getting under way.

• Jerusalem Post: Israel concerned that international forces in Gaza would set a precedent for the West Bank.

• Nearly all of the rockets fired at Israel were made in Gaza, according to the IDF. AFP adds:

The Gaza manufacturers of these rockets used “water pipes” of different diameters for the bodies of the rockets, filling them with explosives made from materials such as products used in agriculture, the official said.

It wouldn’t be the first time Hamas cannibalized Gaza’s own water system or took materials made in Israel and turned them into rockets for its Pipe Dreams.

Gaza’s most famous ice cream parlour seemed an unlikely place to bump into four war-weary Hamas fighters.

The young men grinned boyishly beneath neon streetlights as they slurped fluorescent green crushed-ice drinks, delighting in a taste they had almost forgotten after a month inside a concrete tunnel eating only dates and tuna.

Men crowded around them, shaking the fighters’ hands and kissing their cheeks.

For now, at least, they are hailed as heroes in Gaza — despite the scene of destruction around them . . .

• Obama to the New York Times: It’s hard to see Netanyahu “being able to make some very difficult compromises.”

• South African authorities put the Jewish community on notice that citizens who serve in the IDF could be prosecuted. The Mail & Guardian reports that the government has already opened a case against Dean Goodson, of Cape Town, who is reportedly now in the IDF. Pro-Palestinian activists are pushing for cases to be opened against four other unidentified individuals. More background at The Independent.

• Just to clarify some confusion and rumors: Rabbi Joseph Raksin, who was shot and killed on his way to synagogue Friday night Saturday morning, was the victim of what involved told the Miami Herald was ” a robbery that went badly” and not a hate crime connected to the Gaza crisis.

• Jewish community feel betrayed as Palestinian flags fly over Glasgow City Council.

• Crossfire host S.E. Cupp’s taking shots at the Big Media’s handling of Hamas. It started with her commentary in the New York Daily News, then continued with an interview on CNN. Cupp made a Nazi analogy to explain to host Brooke Baldwin how the media unwittingly helps Hamas by treating it as “political” organization without talking about its overall goal of destroying Israel.

Imagine if we were doing a news report, you and I, on what Hitler wanted, and we said, “He very much wanted to annex Poland and parts of Russia.” You might say he also wanted to kill a lot of Jews. And so, to omit that in a report — and it should be stated every time you’re talking about Hamas’s demands and Hamas’s wants if we’re going to be honest — creates a moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas that doesn’t exist. The demands are not morally equal here.

• Reporter Christopher Stephens discussed the situation for journalists in Gaza with the Jerusalem Post.

• The Mike Carlton fiasco Down Under refuses to die. Australia’s Daily Telegraph extended the controversy’s half-life by using an image from the Boston Marathon bombing to ridicule Carlton. The Telegraph was called out on Twitter for this, and editor Paul Whittaker apologized, telling Guardian Australia:

“The Photoshopped image was an amalgam of different images put together during the art production process,” he told Guardian Australia.

“I was unaware that that particular image had been partially used. It is an inadvertent but regrettable mistake for which the Daily Telegraph apologises unreservedly.”

• “Perhaps it’s time to accept that Facebook is a lousy medium for political debates,” says Tal Abbady, who lost a Facebook friend over an Israel-Gaza post.

Hamas has never been interested in liberating the Palestinian people from the occupation. And Israel could never destroy the infrastructure set up by Hamas. Only we, the Palestinian people, could dismantle it.

What could we have done? The residents of the Gaza Strip had the responsibility to rebel against Hamas rule. Yes, Hamas’ control is deadly and people have been afraid to express their dissatisfaction with its rule and mismanagement. And yet, we abdicated our own responsibility to ourselves.

We knew this. And we let it happen.

Will these deaths – nearly 1,800 to date, nearly 0.1% of the population of the Gaza Strip – teach us a lesson that we will never forget? The lesson is that we must rid ourselves of Hamas and completely demilitarize Gaza. Then we will open up the border crossings. I say this as a loyal Palestinian and because I care for my own people.

18% of the rockets fired by Hamas (by IDF calculations), which is to say about 600 rockets, were fired from schools, hospitals, mosques, and cemeteries.

14% of the rockets fired by Hamas actually fell inside Gaza. That’s more than 450 rockets, and before Israel is blamed for every bit of damage done inside Gaza by rocket fire a calculation must be made of the damage inflicted by Hamas itself.

Nor should [Jews] be required to declare their distance from Israel as a condition for admission into polite society. We opposed such a question being put to all Muslims after 9/11 and, though the cases are not equivalent, the same logic applies here. This is a test for those who take a strong stance in support of the Palestinians, but in truth it is a test for all of us.

• The International Criminal Court received a formal complaint against settlements — a complaint against Turkish settlements in Cyprus. Has Turkey violated the Rome Statute by deporting or transferring Turkish civilians to occupied territory? Eugene Kontorovich looks at what this might mean for Israel and the Palestinians.